Philadelphia artist Moe Brooker (1940-2022) began to find his creative voice in the late 1970s, establishing the visual motifs and techniques that continued to feed his work throughout his career. Jazz music, narrative within abstraction, and color became consistent concerns for Brooker. The pulses, rhythms, and energies that infused his work developed into his own, personal aesthetic language that he considered an extension of himself. Brooker worked with this aesthetic language to share his thoughts and ideas by making them visible: “That is what my work is about, ‘making visible’. And that making visible has everything to do with who I am, what I am, [my] influences, perceptions that I have and that I put down on canvas or paper.” 

Much of what Brooker shares with his viewers incorporates sheer pleasure and joy: “I am interested in the element of surprise in my work. I don’t want you to be able to say that you know what’s going to happen when you see it. I want you to be surprised, and I want to make you smile down inside. Why do I want to make you smile? Because life is tough. What is it that lets you survive? There is something deep down inside of you – that’s a joy that you have. Nobody can take it away from you. I want my paintings to offer the opportunity to find that sense of joy inside yourself when you look at them.” 

Brooker studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and the Tyler School of Art (BFA, MFA, and Rome campus study abroad). He was a life-long educator, with teaching appointments around the nation, most recently at Moore College Art and Design where he was appointed the Penny and Bob Fox Distinguished Professorship, the College’s first Endowed Professorship. Brooker also taught at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, Parsons School of Design, PAFA, Tyler, and the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he was the Black day school faculty member. It was while Brooker was teaching at the Institute that he created Almost There, 1982.